Month: April 2015

Whoever said crime doesn’t pay hasn’t been to Albany. Disgraced Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver hopes to soon join an exclusive club of 18 crooked ex-pols who pull down millions in taxpayer-funded pensions. The former lawmakers, who were censured, indicted or convicted, have collectively glommed more than $3.8 million since fiscal year 2010, Empire Center for Public Policy figures show. Read More

The collapse of Health Republic Insurance of New York, a non-profit insurance co-op established under Obamacare, can be blamed largely on “an apparent breakdown in state oversight,” concludes a report released today by the Empire Center. The report says the state Department of Financial Services (DFS) should loosen its regulatory control of insurance premiums and refocus on the financial soundness of insurance companies. Read More

Budget deficits papered over with borrowed money and fiscal gimmicks. Unaffordable union contracts. Pension contributions “amortized” into the future. Retiree health benefits promised but unfunded. Corruption probes and whiffs of scandal. Accountability blurred, responsibility shirked, and hard decisions avoided again and again. That litany could describe any number of old, declining American cities—including a few that, like Detroit, actually went broke. But the same dysfunction exists in affluent corners of New York’s archetypal suburb: Long Island Read More